Friday, March 20, 2009

Live Poetry

This is a recording of me (Desmond Swords) made in Damar Hall, July 2006, when I was part of that years Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, an annual scheme in which emerging poets are given an opportunity to workshop and read their poetry under the aegis of Poetry Ireland.

Hi 3p4. sorry it's taken a few days to get here, i have been on a compositional bender and my head's been in the slightly wuzzy state constant hacking brings, a whirr of half off kilter consciousness and riding the dragon of the mind.

~

I do have lots of recordings, but not online and a few - but not of me, recorded at the Monster Truck art gallery on Dublin's Francis Street in the Liberties, which is just on the edge of the South city centre.

I used to do poetry there have lots of recordings on my computer, which I would take down on the Thursday nights we gathered there, and record whoever turned up. It was very informal really, a place to take a few beers and a place where we could do poetry without having to pay exorbitant prices.

I have three recordings here at Dublin Poets (myspace) - two of which are songs, and the poetry's by Tim Costello, a young poet in his late 20's who never sends out to mags, just does the writing and is totally consumed by the fire within and someone I wouldn't be surprised (expect almost) to come to prominence sooner or later, as he has been writing since he was a kid and for the last 10 years at least, totally addicted and his whole life ravelled in writing.

A genuine poet, someone for whom "career management" is not the first word in their lexicon.

Hi atf, I see king billy no longer has a throne and has been demoted back to the ranks. I just hope carol picks up the slack and starts turning out some viz and vim gear we can really get stuck into, get the spark back there.

~

I read Motion's Larkin bio and it was similar to reading the most important piece of evidence in a case last, because the evidence is pretty incontravertable, he wasn't an angel and at the very end as he collapsed in the toilet, asked one of the three women he had been juggling for most of his life, to shred the diaries, which by the sounds of it were the repository for a lot of hatred and jealousy he felt most of his life towards even his closest pals.

Why the contemporary poetic topography is as it is, is much clearer now, the final piece of the puzzle that frames what till I read the bio, was a picture that didn't make much sense. The reason why seemingly normal pedestrian language with the odd stab at the Yeatsean majesty thrown in, is considered top class, is down to Larkin, whose fave word was *bumhole* but cunt, piss, fuck and all the heavy proof, was his stock in trade diary gear and in the general course of his conversation in letters, basically a very angry man and so he's the template I could aim to become - a sort of perfect role model in my minds eye, of a human figure to daydream of becoming, if I was a bit (well quite a lot) of an oxo snoot, a casual racist and unable to have normal adult relationships with women.

No wonder he's so popular, he articulates the side of life that speaks of disappointment.